“I have a stalker,” wrote Ashley Olsen, 35, on her Instagram shortly before she was murdered. The American artist was strangled in Florence and it seems like she suspected that someone was watching her before her death.
Despite the Instagram post, Olsen did not make any complaints of stalking to the police. The Italian police are considering that the comment on the photo might have been made in jest and not to be taken seriously. The photo was taken and posted on September 12, 2015, with the hashtag “#weirdshit”. Three weeks later shared another photo on Instagram of her flipping off the camera with the hashtag “#creeper”.
The body was only discovered Saturday by Olsen’s Italian boyfriend, Federico Fiorentini, a 42-year-old painter. She had bruises and scratches around her neck indicated that she might have been strangled. Experts began carrying out the autopsy this morning.
Olsen’s body was found in her apartment. There were no signs of forced entry indicating that Olsen might have known the person, was expecting someone else or did not feel threatened by the person at her door.
Police currently do not suspect the boyfriend due to his alibi that he was elsewhere during the time frame in which police believe the murder occurred. Police are currently putting together a timeline to figure out what happened between Thursday and Friday night when Olsen was last seen alive.
Police will be looking at surveillance cameras near her apartment to help piece together what happened on the night of her murder. The police have also already ruled out sexual assault despite the fact that the autopsy has not been officially done yet.
There is a lot of worry among locals that the investigation could lead to another high profile case with a lot of worldwide media coverage like the Amanda Knox trial. Amanda Knox was found guilty of murdering her British roommate while in Italy, but her verdict was overturned after it was found that the police investigation was very messily done and the evidence did not clearly point to Amanda but instead to another man. The long drawn out trial drew a lot of media attention and criticism from around the world.
Now, with the death of Ashley Olsen, the police are under scrutiny to get everything right in order to avoid another Amanda Knox scandal.
Olsen moved to Italy to be closer to her father, an architect who works for the Florence Art School Bianca Cappello.
